…or is it a figurehead? Meet the sailing ketch "Desperado" berthed in Newport, Oregon. She hasn’t sailed much recently, judging from her rig, but looky here: (For lubbers, a dolphinspike is that rod that goes underneath the bow to the chain running from the hull to the far end of the bowsprit, basically to create…
The passage from Bamfield BC to Newport, Oregon, took 38 hours: two full days and one night. Coming in to Newport from offshore, we dodged a bazillion crab pots – including a set that some entrepreneur placed right in the middle of the fairway between two entrance buoys. Between the tuna boats and the crabbers,…
Effinghm Bay, Barkley Sound, site of official completion of circumnavigation. GB’s first haircut – performed by MS (first-time barber) at anchor in Effingham Bay. Don’t make fun of the man’s hair or he will cut you with one of them there knives. Tzartus Cove in Barkley Sound is one of the last places in this…
Crossed back from Canada into US waters the morning of August 5, 2007. Visibility was a bit limited by fog. But that really IS a pic of Cape Flattery and Tatoosh Island from about 5 miles offshore.
Bears. Our ursine friends are alive and well and foraging the shoreline in select locations on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. Problem is, the trees grow all the way down to the high water line, so you can’t see any of them unless you venture from the boat by dinghy onto their turf. As…
During July we moseyed SE down Vancouver Island’s West Coast from sound to sound. There are fine, sheltered anchorages in most places – many with great shoreline exploring opportunities. From north to south: Quatsino Sound, Checleset Bay, Kyuquot Sound (pronounced “ky-OO-kit”), Esperanza Inlet, Nootka Sound. In Esperanza Inlet we began seeing the first signs of…
GB has had pretty fair success at fishing, having caught a variety of rockfish, sole, salmon, greenling and lingcod in various places around Vancouver Island. However, we had both expected, given how often he has fished, to have had better luck. Many of the other cruisers (and locals) we have met have said that they…
Author Jonathan Raban, in his book “Passage to Juneau,” has a way of interpreting Northwest art that is absolutely spot-on. Raban describes* that the more he looked at Northwest art, “…the more I saw that Northwest Indian art was maritime in much more than its subject matter. Its whole formal conception and composition were rooted…
Gosh. Connectivity to the Internet Tubes is hard when traveling by boat. A good rule of thumb has been that, whenever we see a cluster of 10 or more houses on a shoreline, the chances are pretty good that at least one of them is trying to download Internet porn, so it’s worth trying to…
Rounding Cape Scott We left Seattle in late January for our trip around Vancouver Island. We wintered in Sidney for two months, and left there during the last week of March. Since there, we have traveled almost 1600 miles around the island. This includes a wee 400 mile roundtrip detour back to Seattle in early…